The Indian PM’s visit to Washington will be crucial to determine how much the US President is in a mood to listen.

The Indian political leadership has, since Independence, rooted for a multi-polar world. Now, with Donald Trump’s US voluntarily pulling back from its role as world’s peace keeper of last resort, India is close to being granted its 70-year-old wish.

The US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord will not have much impact on the fight against global warming as India and others take the lead in embracing renewable energy.

Just as US President Donald Trump’s repudiation of the Trans Pacific Partnership provided Chinese President Xi Jinping the opportunity to present himself as the prime defender of the globalised trading order, the US walkout of the Paris Climate Pact has presented Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi the rare chance of presenting India as the leader of the global fight against climate change.

US President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris Accord may be a chance for India to shine, writes an energy expert.

Trump’s pullout from the Paris Accord on climate change has brought India to the fore. Two claims are especially puzzling. One, the treaty lets India (and China) not do much till 2030, and that India is looking for developed countries to pay them $2.5 trillion for its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). India’s NDC calculations were taken with their own calculations, and have very little to do with the US (or any other country).

Any fault line is worrying. Even more so is the fact that we seem to be living in a world criss-crossed by such fissures, some overlapping and others not so. Any one of the them could set off tremors or even earthquakes of proportions unprecedented since the end of the Second World War.

The chief of one of India’s leading trade bodies, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), traces some of the lesser known facts behind India’s positive impact on the US economy in this ‘India Global Business’ exclusive.

Over the past two decades, the bilateral partnership between India and the United States had grown in leaps and bounds. Looking back at the trajectory of the relationship, we have truly come a long way – from the cloud of suspicion that hung after India conducted its nuclear tests in the 1990s to the landmark US-India civil nuclear agreement in 2006 – which helped spur sustained engagements at the very highest levels – till today and the establishment of an array of official dialogues encompassing all aspects of our bilateral relationship.

Donald Trump and his fellow travellers in Europe are doing their countries a disservice by recklessly pulling up the drawbridge on immigration.

Everyone knows that whenever their fortresses and castles came under siege, kings of old would pass the order to pull up the drawbridges and every able man would take up position to repel the invaders. And most of you will be familiar with the story of Don Quixote, the fictional medieval Spanish nobleman, who attacked windmills under the delusion that they were dangerous enemies.

Combine these two narratives and you get a very disturbing picture of the present and the future.

An assertive China presents Prime Minister Modi with his most intractable foreign policy challenge, but there are indications that Beijing may be getting a little edgy.

China considered itself to be a rival of the US. In its world view, India was a regional player, at best the first among equals in South Asia.

David vs Goliath

In absolute terms, there is some merit in this argument. China’s $11.4-trillion economy, the world’s second largest, is five times India’s, which is world’s sixth largest, with a GDP of $2.3 trillion in 2016.

Last year, China’s per capita income, at $8,260, was five times the comparable figure of $1,718 for India. It is the world’s largest manufacturer of goods, its biggest trading nation and its military budget, at $131 billion is more than three times larger than India’s annual defence spending of $40 billion.

Asian equations, specially between the two giant economies of China and India will be in focus with the installation of Donald Trump as the 45th US president.

Trump’s belligerent ‘America First’ foreign and commercial policy stance, will in all likelihood, force China to curb its manufactured goods exports to the US, with whom it has a whopping and patently unsustainable trade surplus of nearly half a trillion dollars! It is unlikely that even US MNCs, which have huge export bases in China, could prevail upon Trump to not push back imports from China. This should push Chinese exporters to look for alternate markets during the next five to 10 years, during which China completes its planned switch to greater reliance on domestic consumption. India, with its growing and potentially large domestic markets and long track record of trade deficits, would offer a tempting opportunity for Chinese exporters looking to divert their exports and utilising their installed capacities.